Sacramento City Council candidate now says she didn’t concede

Sacramento City Council candidate Ellen Cochrane congratulated her competitors in a blog post over the weekend. She thanked her supporters. And she said she was thinking about which candidate to support in the November run-off election.

Sacramento City Council candidate Ellen Cochrane congratulated her competitors in a blog post over the weekend. She thanked her supporters. And she said she was thinking about which candidate to support in the November run-off election.

But she insists it wasn’t a concession.

Cochrane said today that her Saturday blog post that read a lot like a concession was not, in fact, a concession.

“It may read to some people like a concession, but it wasn’t a concession,” she said.

Cochrane stands in third place in the council race in east Sacramento and South Natomas, just 77 votes out of second place and a spot in the November run-off. County elections officials are scheduled to update the results on Wednesday.

Cochrane said on her website Saturday that “the trend indicates that Cyril (Shah) and Jeff (Harris) will be the top two finishers” in the race. Harris currently stands in first and Shah in second.

“True congratulations to them,” she wrote. “It was a great race.”

She added she was “very undecided about whom to support for City Council from District Three. It will depend upon which candidate most persuasively embraces the neighborhood concerns I carried.”

Cochrane – who did not employ a professional campaign team - called from Hawaii to try and clear things up. “It was just kind of a statement to my supporters,” she said. She acknowledged it was a “premature thanks to them for their hard work.”

About This Blog

Ryan Lillis has covered the city of Sacramento, its 108 neighborhoods and its politicians since 2008. Prior to that, he covered crime at The Sacramento Bee. A native of upstate New York, Lillis has a journalism degree from the University of California, Berkeley.